24 Jul 2017 Air Evac Lifeteam offers emergency care

by Donna Lampkin Stephens
Mike Kemp photo

In a 15-year active-duty Army career, Faye Caldwell was a scout pilot in multiple deployments, including Germany and South Korea.

Since her discharge, she has traded her experience with CH-47 Chinooks and UH-60 Black Hawks for a Bell 206 helicopter.  

“It is very rewarding,” said Caldwell, who has flown for Air Evac Lifeteam for three years and lives in Jacksonville. “In the Army, my job was always very different. As a scout pilot, we carried weapons.

“This is definitely different — a different way of feeling like you’re saving a life. You’re actively trying to get someone the best care you can get them — and quickly.”

She said the Air Force trains all its pilots on both rotor-wing (helicopter) and fixed-wing (airplane) aircraft. Army pilots tend to focus more on helicopters.

“Unless you’re talking about a Chinook, most helicopters are pretty similar,” she said. “They may be different in size and stuff, but you have to get training in all of them.”

Joe Irby was an automobile mechanic when he embarked on his second career. He went to nursing school at Jefferson Regional Medical Center, graduating in 1997. After a few years working in hospitals, he got the chance to become a flight nurse and has been with Air Evac Lifeteam for 14 years.

“This is more rewarding because you really feel like you’ve made a difference for more people,” said Irby, 55. “Working in a hospital, in the ER — I really hate to sound negative, but you spend so much time doing stuff that really doesn’t help people.”

Tim Jenkins was a heavy equipment and automobile mechanic before becoming a paramedic. He lives in Russellville and works regularly with Irby and Caldwell out of the Vilonia base.

According to airmedcarenetwork.com, AirMedCare Network is an alliance among air ambulance providers Air Evac Lifeteam, Med-trans Air Medical Transport and REACH Air Medical Services that is the largest of its kind in the United States.

Other Arkansas bases are in Paragould, Blytheville, Harrison, Paris, Springdale, De Queen, Mountain Home and Forrest City.

Nikki Murdock, local membership sales manager for AirMedCare Network, said the organization could pick up patients at the scene of an accident or do hospital transfers to get them to the appropriate facility.

“We service about a 150-mile radius around Vilonia,” she said. “We’re on call 24 hours, seven days a week.”

The Vilonia base includes four pilots, four paramedics, four nurses, one membership director, one mechanic and one program director, who oversees the general operations of the base.

Round the clock, a pilot, nurse and paramedic are on duty at the base — similar to a fire station.

Irby said in this job, there was little difference between the work of a paramedic and a nurse.

“There are a few things paramedics are allowed to do that nurses aren’t in some states and vice-versa, but when you get right down to the brass tacks, there’s not much difference,” he said. “The nursing side has more training on medication and disease process. Paramedics have more training in emergencies and trauma.”

Pilots, obviously, bring a different set of skills.

“I’ve landed in some very interesting places,” Caldwell said. “I’ve landed on the same spot on Interstate 40 between Memphis and Forrest City twice about a year or so apart. Quite a few times I’ve landed on highways, back yards, golf courses, in a parking lot behind a Sonic, football fields, baseball diamonds.

“That’s the beauty of a small helicopter — you can put it in places you couldn’t put a larger one.”

Pilots are only authorized to work 12-hour shifts by the Federal Aviation Administration, so Caldwell and her fellow pilots work those shifts for seven days and then are off for seven days. Two pilots partner for the week, one working days and the other nights, and they rotate shifts on their next week on.

“When we’re on shift, it’s kind of like being in a fire station,” Caldwell said.

The workload, she said, was hit-or-miss.

“Sometimes you’ll go two or three days without a flight, and then some days you’ll have two or three flights,” she said. “It’s just a matter of necessity.”

She said the banter back and forth between the pilots and medical staff on duty was often amusing.

“Our worlds are so very different,” she said, chuckling. “Most of us pilots don’t have any medical training, and most of the medical staff don’t have pilot training. Those are two very strong personality types in the same building. They usually team up on me.”

Air Evac Lifeteam started in 1985. Murdock has been with the company for eight years.

“Whoever is first on the scene dials 911 and gives the location of the emergency,” she said, explaining the process. “At that point, the paramedics on the scene, ambulance and fire crew decide whether it’s serious enough to launch an aircraft.

She said area fire and ambulance crews from all over Faulkner County train with the Vilonia Air Evac Lifeteam.

“We all train together to establish what to do in case of heart attack, stroke victims or traumatic accidents,” she said.

Irby said he had found a big difference between hospital and flight nursing.

“In the hospital, you pretty much have to have an order for everything,” he said. “Being on a flight crew, you have a set of protocols you follow, but you don’t have to have direct orders from a doctor. That gives you a little more autonomy, but at the same time, there’s a lot more responsibility.”

Irby, who lives between Conway and Vilonia, said he had always loved the idea of flying.

“I went when I could,” he said.

While he didn’t get a pilot’s license — yet, anyway — he jumped at the chance to put flying together with his occupation.

“When the opportunity came up, I said I think I’ll try it,” he said. “I did, and I’ve loved it.”

AirMedCare is a membership service. Murdock said a household membership costs $65 per year.

“You don’t have to be a member to be flown, but if you’re a member, we bill your health insurance and you never get a bill,” Murdock said. “The bills are quite expensive.”

She said all Arkansas bases feature helicopters — rotor-wing transports — but the organization does have fixed-wing planes it can use for long-distance flights.

“We can get patients to the plane if need be,” she said.

According to an Air Evac Lifeteam brochure, the Association of Air Medical Services estimates nearly 400,000 rotor-wing transports in the United States every year, with 150,000 more patients flown by fixed-wing aircraft.

“Our dispatch is very highly technical,” Caldwell said. “They’ve got all these cool gadgets where they can see where every helicopter is. They call the closest and most available. We want to get the patient transported as quickly as possible.”

She said her team could be at Conway Regional from the Vilonia base in six minutes and from Conway Regional to UAMS in Little Rock in 15 minutes or less.

According to the brochure: “Reducing the time to receive definitive care for any medical emergency can save lives.”

Murdock said she found out personally how important such access is.

“It is a big deal,” she said. “In 2010, my husband (Perry) severed two fingers and severely damaged two others in a rodeo accident at Conway Arena. We took him to Conway Regional, and his fingers followed in a McDonald’s cup. Air Evac got him to UAMS in 11 minutes.

“The bill was $16,000, and our insurance paid $1,000. Now, bills are $25,000 and up. Everybody needs to be a member because it happened to me.”